Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.44.0211142211520.27041-100000@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.aol.com>,
"WRYTING-L : Writing and Theory across Disciplines" <WRYTING-L@LISTSERV.UTORONTO.CA>
Subject: Poetry the Configuration of Lies
Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2002 22:12:04 -0500 (EST)
Poetry the Configuration of Lies the sentiments in poetry are surely never meant to be taken at face value, how shall i love thee, i'm heading towards armageddon, i think that i shall never see, even language poetry is guilty of phrasing whose meaning cannot ever be taken literally or performatively. so what you say. i say that by its very deflection into the niceties of language, poetry lies, largely through hyperbole, or the placings of hypotheticals where none are warranted. poetry is our great escape; we use it to express what-if worlds without building all of their contents, piece by piece as in the novel - the bridging effects of the language suture over any anomalies. it does leave a distaste in the mouth; people rarely read poetry because the lies are caught out, and the descent into language is just too problematic or exhausting. isn't it enough we use language all the time, without having to examine very word of it, over and over again? and every poem is guilty, surely, of this, every poem has its moments of fascination with fictions that are never revealed as such. "O ever present in my view! My wafted spirit is with you, And soothes your boding fears: I see you all oppressed with gloom Sit lonely in that cheerless room-- Ah me! You are in tears!" (S.T.C) if ever present, then his sight is clouded, like a speck in the eye or detached retina. has he lost his spirit? is it always bothering here? is she completely and always oppressed? when did this happen? lies, all lies, but a pretty conceit nonetheless. and hardly think for a moment the exemptness of contemporary poetry. it suffers under the weight of false performance. nothing happens. nothing has happened. better an engineering drawing that is translated more or less one on one to the reality of the concrete. poetry reduces our morals, can present nothing but false sentiments, remains a disease which infiltrates our body politic. Plato was right, but not by virtue of the Dionysian; it's the Apollonian semblance of truth that decays from within. better to live in an emotional world of speaking and writing which insists on nothing but confusion, fuzzy boundaries, and exhilarating thought, the world of the short story or fantasy, clearly demarcated as such, even the world of the docudrama and its other trans- genre equivalents. poetry allows anyone to say anything and get away with anything; if it were not for poetry, Coleridge would be exposed for the stalker he clearly is. thus poetry is a configuration of lies, and should be ignored by all prac- tical people, which is basically all of us who live in this world, and have not yet gone to the next. ===